So It Goes
by Namaste
Summary: A season in drabbles, House POV. House watches the rug go back into place, his own blood an abstract tattoo in the center of the room where he’ll walk over it and around it and past it every day. His blood. His mistake. His reminder.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note:This uses the meme to take a book of at least 100 pages and use the first sentence at the top of page 10, 20, 30 and so forth to inspire drabbles. I opted to use each drabble also relate to each episode from this season. This covers the first half of the season. I plan to cover the second half of the season after the finale._

_These drabbles are all 100 words and use Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five." The title, of course, is from there as well._

---

"_Heck no, Nancy," I said. _

_(Meaning)_

For just a moment, House thinks he's imagined it. The twinge he'd felt was just a bad memory, he tells himself, some leftover pain his muscles had held onto, waiting to spring out and surprise him when he least expected it, when he'd finally begun to believe, to think it was all over.

He takes three steps, then another, walking gingerly on the concrete, trying not to limp but afraid to put his full weight on his right leg. The pain eases, fades into the background. But he knows it's there, and had only been hiding.

It will be back.

---

_And so on._

_(Cane & Able)_

House sets the treadmill at a walk, then increases the speed, He'd forgotten how it felt, the pounding of his heart as it kept pace with his body, the way it'd respond when he ran uphill, or sprinted to the end of the block.

He doesn't want to lose that feeling, but knows as he hits the button again, goes even faster, that he's already lost. The pain builds with each step. It's the devil at his heels, and all he's been doing is running in place as it catches up with him, grabs on tight and won't let go.

_---_

_He never got mad at anything._

_(Informed Consent)_

The first time House had done this, it was for a patient who had come to him too late.

"Your doctor was a moron," House had told the man when he first saw him.

The man had just shrugged. "He was the best I could afford," he said.

The man was tired, worn out from the misdiagnosed Q fever that had filled his lungs with fluid and damaged his heart beyond repair. He didn't cry when House told him he was dying. "It hurts," he'd finally said. "I don't want to hurt anymore."

House nodded. "I'll do what I can."

---

_Weary had a block of balsa wood, which was supposed to be a foxhole pillow._

_(Lines In the Sand)_

John House came home from his first tour with a new tattoo peeking out from beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt.

"It's a reminder," he told his son.

Greg didn't know how anyone could forget war.

"You forget because you don't want to remember, so you ignore it, until everything bad fades away," John said. "You need to remember everything."

Now House watches the rug go back into place, his own blood an abstract tattoo in the center of the room where he'll walk over it and around it and past it every day. His blood. His mistake. His reminder.

---

_He had just been elected president, and it was necessary that he speak._

_(Fools For Love)_

Whenever House threw out an insult -- whether for a lack of style or a lack of intellect -- he got away with it. Everyone figured no one fought back because they felt sorry for him once they saw the cane.

But it wasn't the cane, or the limp, or the pills. House knew how to pick his words wisely, to keep his victims off balance just long enough that by the time they realized they'd been insulted, he'd be out of the room.

When House finds himself off balance, and falling against the door, he realizes he was wrong this time.

---

_The major had been there on two separate tours of duty._

_(Que Sera Sera)_

House tells himself that this isn't that bad. The first time he was arrested he'd been transferred to the county jail -- ten men jammed into a cell barely big enough for four, and an overflowing toilet.

This time there's just the happy drunk sprawled on the bench.

But he'd had two whole legs then. This time the floor is cold and the Vicodin wore off sometime just past midnight. There's no clock. He keeps time by rating his climbing pain level. House won't give Tritter the satisfaction of seeing him suffer, so he sits, and grits his teeth, and waits.

_---_

_This ain't bad," the hobo told Billy on the second day._

_(Son of a Coma Guy)_

House stumbles slightly as he heads for the door. He realizes his cane isn't where he'd put it, and scans the floor for a moment before he understands what happened to it. He steadies himself with one hand on his leg and glances back at vegetative state guy. He's sitting on the couch, looking up.

House closes the door.

He lowers himself down to the floor and hopes this won't take long. When Wilson shows up, he knows he should tell him to go back downstairs, save himself, but he's selfish and wants him here, so he lets him stay.

_---_

_Who killed me?" he would ask._

_(Whac-A-Mole)_

House stares at Wilson, waiting for him to stand, to walk over to the bike, to ask -- no, demand a ride home. He doesn't, just stares back, anger and disgust in his eyes.

House isn't sure if he's glad Wilson doesn't ask, or disappointed. He never asked Wilson to be the martyr, to lie for him. But Wilson has created his own set of rules, and now expects House to play by them, to somehow become someone different.

But House can't follow someone else's rules, even for Wilson. He looks at the road ahead, hits the gas, and drives away.

_---_

_Out went the lights._

_(Finding Judas)_

There is no light at the end of the tunnel. Not even the relief of an oncoming train to end it all -- the pain, the misery, the knowledge of how he's screwed everything up. House stands there, his hand still in a tight fist, as Chase interrupts the surgery, gives the girl her life back.

House has lost Stacy. He's lost the full use of his leg. He's afraid he's lost his only friend, and now he wonders if he's losing his mind as well. All that's left is the pain, and the misery, and knowing he's screwed everything up.

_---_

_Billy uncovered his head_

_(Merry Little Christmas)_

House sees the dim light of the weak winter sun coming in his windows and realizes he's awake. He isn't sure if that's a good thing.

He has a dim memory of Wilson, seeing disappointment on his face, but he's alone now. Always alone now.

He raises himself up and sits with his back against the couch, his brain still muddled with alcohol and oxycodone. He's in limbo, neither dead nor alive. He hates it there, and realizes he doesn't want to die, and knows he'll do what he must -- he'll pay the price Tritter demands, so he can live.

_---_

_God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections._

_(Words and Deeds)_

Voldemort hesitates for just a moment, then shakes his head and turns down the figure House offers.

Next time, House adds a zero, and Voldemort scans the room before giving a slight nod.

House vomits two more times before the pill arrives. His stomach muscles ache, and his leg screeches out in pain from both the damaged nerves and the amount of time he's spent on the cold floor tiles in front of the toilet.

When he sees the familiar shape in the white paper cup, House smiles, and swallows it down like the addict they all say he is.

_---_

_I never thought anybody would marry me."_

_(One Day, One Room)_

House hates dredging up the past. The past should stay there. It doesn't mean anything. Talking doesn't change anything.

"Maybe it does," Wilson says and brings out another beer. "Some people repeat the same mistakes because of a hidden abuse."

"And some people with perfect childhoods grow up to become mass murderers," House says. "You're a lousy psychologist. Stick to oncology."

Wilson shrugs. "Some people need to talk about the bad stuff to get past it. They'll never be happy, or healthy or be able to move on until they do."

"And some don't," House says, and takes a drink.


	2. Chapter 2

**These drabbles are all 100 words. Since Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five," which provided the prompts for the first set of drabbles isn't long enough for the full season, I jumped this time to Vonnegut's "Galapagos" (in honor of House's uncle, of course).**

_----------------------_  
_The Hotel El Dorado was a brand-new, five-story tourist accommodation -- built of unadorned cement block.__(Needle In A Haystack)_

When they first got to Rome, Dad warned Mom and Greg to watch out for the gypsies at the train station. Greg had been excited, expecting to see brightly colored, horse-drawn caravans. Instead, there was just a collection of women and children, looking hungry and tired, leaning against concrete walls.

Greg moved on -- they all did, trading one city for another, one country for another, one name for another: Roma now, not gypsy, and House, not Greg. When House wheels into the hallway he sees the boy's mother. She looks tired, and he thinks maybe things haven't changed at all.

_---_  
_I was there too, but perfectly invisible.  
(Insensitive)_

The nurses, the doctors, hell, even Wilson ask for a number. Rate your pain from one to ten. House hates the scale. You can't quantify pain. It doesn't show up on an MRI, but it's there, always there, and always growing stronger.

How can he explain that a rating of "three" when you first wake up grates on you as the day goes on, increasing to "five" by noon, then "seven" by quitting time simply because it never goes away?

House tried to fool it into silence with Ketamine. It wasn't fooled, and now it's making up for lost time.

_---_  
_The national currencies of all six guests at the El Dorado, the four Americans, one claiming to be Canadian, the two Japanese, were still as good as gold everywhere on the planet.__  
(Half-Wit)_

House watches from the balcony and wonders if anyone below him understands what it means to be normal. If they appreciate it.

He sees med students, anxious to prove they're something exceptional, something special. He wants to tell them to be careful what they wish for.

Patrick passes below him. He's smiling. A real smile -- not that imitation he used to wear whenever he heard applause. It's the smile he used to have only when he was playing the piano, and House hopes again that he made the right call, and that someday Patrick will be happy just being normal.

_---_

_He could talk to birds in their own languages, for example, something she could never have done, since her ancestors were notoriously tone deaf on both sides of her family.__  
(Top Secret)_

House knew a geneticist at Johns Hopkins who loved to lecture about how close we all were to becoming someone else -- something else.

"One little slip in your DNA code," he'd say, "one little malformation in utero, and you can't walk, you can't talk. You're blind, you're deaf, your heart refuses to beat, your brain can't interpret the signals your body sends it. You don't know how lucky you are."

House used to roll his eyes.

Then the infarction robbed him of his leg. Now he stands before the urinal, takes a deep breath, and wonders what he'll lose next.

_---_  
_And this supremely important brother of the insignificant hotel manager was at that moment arriving at Guayaquil International Airport on a nearly empty transport plane from New York City, where he had been doing publicity for "the Nature Cruise of the Century."__  
(Fetal Position)_

Survival of the fittest sucks, House decides. There was nothing fit about about that baby. He should have died. Ten years ago, he would have died, and taken mom along with him.

Yet he didn't. Neither did mom. Because of Cuddy, because of him, because of science. The laws of nature no longer apply because science rewrote the laws.

He looks over to the TV screen where a marine iguana dives into the water. Someone says the iguanas are dying, because they haven't evolved in pace with other changes on the Galapagos.

Everything changes, House thinks, and changes the channel.

_---_  
_It was by means of this that Gokubi or Mandarax heard spoken his language, and then, in accordance with instructions from its buttons, translated them into words on its screen.__  
(Airborne)_

House can't remember learning Spanish, but by the time he's 16, they're in Arizona and he speaks it well enough that older kids bring him along when they cross the border, buying him beers in exchange for his skills in negotiating the purchase of marijuana or sex.

When he used to travel, he'd head out into the street until the rhythms of the local language seeped into his skull and began to make some kind of sense.

Now he rarely leaves, but sometimes he goes to one of the international markets in town, finds a quiet corner, sits and listens.

_---_  
_Nobody believed anybody anymore, since there was so much lying going on.  
(Act Your Age)_

Wilson tells his patients all the facts. He gives them the odds, he tells them what treatment they'll get, the side effects, their alternatives. But beneath those facts and figures, he hides the real truth, what he thinks will really happen, whether his gut instinct tells them if they'll be one of the lucky ones.

He's learned to hide his emotions: from his wives, from House, from himself, House thinks. It doesn't take House long to learn Wilson took Cuddy to the play, but as he studies his friend, he can't figure out why, and if he should be worried.

_---_  
_What Andrew MacIntosh said now to Jesus Ortiz was so offensive, and in view of the hunger pangs spreading throughout Ecuador, so dangerous , that his big brain really must have been sick in some serious way -- if giving a damn what happened next was a sign of mental health.__  
(House Training)_

House can't offer Foreman comfort. He would only be lying if he told him that things would be all right.

Foreman should think about her. House has known some doctors -- respected men and women who walked away when their patients died, shrugging it off as a statistical anomaly. He wonders if they're missing something inside, some emotional short circuit in the brain that means that they really don't give a damn.

House knows people think he doesn't care, but that night as he lies awake, thinking of every wrong decision, he reminds himself that it doesn't matter what they think.

_---_  
_On the island of Manhattan, a middle-aged American publicity man contemplated the collapse of his masterpiece, which was "the Nature Cruise of the Century.  
__(Family)_

This is how it begins, House knows, with that slow descent away from what you've had to what you'll become, by thinking  
with your heart, rather than your head, by allowing yourself to be swayed by the easier answer, rather than the best one. He lets Foreman run another useless test, knowing he'll fail.

Getting what you want isn't easy. House studies the gnaw marks Hector left behind on the table, and realizes that sometimes you don't even know what it is you wanted in the first place. And sometimes, change can bring you something you never knew you wanted.

_---_  
_When Andrew MacIntosh signed up for three staterooms on the Bahia de Darwin's maiden voyage, Bobby King had reason to be mystified.  
(Resignation)_

This isn't happiness, this muddled mess of emotions, House tells himself. This is nothing more than confusion, an untrained brain that can't find its way through a minefield of options and opinions.

Happiness is overrated, just random neurons firing in the right order. Music makes him happy. So do puzzles. He senses the clues of every case slipping into place, moving into the right order, finally making sense. That's what happiness is -- knowing the answer, knowing what no one else knows.

Let Foreman think it's just about the puzzles, that he doesn't care about the patients, but House knows better.

_---_  
_After Mary Hepburn showed her film about the great frigate birds, and the windowshades in the classroom were raised and the lights turned back on, some student, again almost invariably a male, was sure to ask, sometimes clinically, sometimes as a comedian, sometimes bitterly, hating and fearing women: "Do the females always try to pick the biggest ones?"  
(The Jerk)_

The kid is ruthless with his queen, placing her in harm's way, tempting House to make bad moves by leaving her vulnerable. House ignores him. This isn't about winning a game, it's about pushing the kid, making him vulnerable, forcing him to respond, to take chances. He doesn't bite.

"You're going to lose," the kid says, and for a moment, House believes him.

It's only when he has time to think, to understand, to play the game out in his head, to see it through that he sees how easy it'll be to change everything, and how he can win.

_---_  
_He had heard that the tribe was down to only fourteen members, so that their final extinction by the encroachments of civilization seemed inevitable."__  
(Human Error)_

Foreman isn't ready, and House doesn't have the patience to explain to him why he's wrong, so House lets him go.

Chase is ready, but won't leave, so House makes him leave.

Cameron thinks she's ready, and House thinks maybe she is, so he nods, and watches her pack her things.

"Those things I said about you not not liking change weren't intended to be some kind of a dare," Wilson says.

House puts down the guitar, picks up his beer. "Maybe they should have been."

"So what are you going to do now?"

House shrugs. "See what happens next."


End file.
